


Petit Trianon

by LyraNgalia



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Episode: s03e02 The Sign of Three, F/M, Great Hiatus, Mind Palace, Season/Series 03 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-10
Updated: 2014-01-10
Packaged: 2018-01-07 22:53:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1125358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LyraNgalia/pseuds/LyraNgalia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The first time Sherlock Holmes encountered Irene Adler in his Mind Palace was six days after he left her in Mycroft's home...</i>
</p><p>An exploration of just how often the memory of Irene Adler invades Sherlock Holmes' mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Petit Trianon

**Author's Note:**

> Again, thanks to [TrixiePareidolia](http://archiveofourown.org/users/TrixiePareidolia) who is a saint and a Tyrion Lannister among women for putting up with my shipping habits and my "OMG READ MY FIC PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE" emails.

The first time Sherlock Holmes encountered Irene Adler in his Mind Palace was six days after he left her in Mycroft's home, her parting words echoing in his mind.  
  
 _You're right. I won't even last six months._  
  
A spot of mud on John's shoes, dried and caked on from his trip to Dorset, had reminded Sherlock that the particular properties of mud from Dorset makes it instantly identifiable, and that such a property may become instrumental in solving a murder down the line. The knowledge wasn't important enough to keep at the forefront of his mind, so he reached into his mind palace, with every intention of filing the knowledge of flaking Dorset mud away, and instead found himself face-to-face with the Woman.  
  
The fact that she had proven herself so adept at getting into places where she was not expected meant Sherlock did not immediately notice that she wasn't even physically in 221B, despite her state of undress.  
  
"Don't you have somewhere else to be?" he told her irritably, "Some terrorist group to be running away from?"  
  
And while John was used to his flatmate's mutterings, this was odd, even to him, and his voice piped up from the kitchen, "Did you say something, Sherlock?"  
  
And only then did Sherlock realize that the Woman in all her vivid reality, every detail sharp as the first time he'd seen her, was not actually there at all, that she was simply in his head.  
  
He ignored her.  
  
*****  
  
The second time she appeared in his mind, John had just left, after breaking the "news" of her new life, and the weight of her phone was heavy in his hand.  
  
"Witness protection in America," the Woman in his mind said, appearing to sit in his chair, wearing little more than her self-satisfied smirk and her black leather stilettos. Her voice was exactly as he remembered it (but then it would be, she was a figment of his photographic recognition), a velvet contralto with a hint of smug knowing laughter in it that irritated him to no end and yet made him want to prove her wrong, to rise to the challenge.  
  
"Mycroft doesn't think I could handle the news of the Woman's death," he said aloud. Not answered. Because no question had been asked. He refused to address her, address her as the Woman, address her at all, this irritatingly persistent figment of his imagination. "Apparent death. My deception worked."  
  
" _Your_ deception?" she drawled, sounding offended. He did not have to turn around to know that the figment of his imagination, the grit in the lens, the ghost in his mind palace, looked offended, sitting in what appeared to be his chair in his mind, the seat from which he looked down into the labyrinthine space he thought of as his mind palace. "My, how recollection changes. We both know you couldn't have pulled it off alone."  
  
 _Neither could you_ , he wanted to say. Wanted to point out she'd needed him there at that precise moment. But to say so would have been to acknowledge the Woman. The Figment.  
  
As if she actually heard him (could she? or was it just his memory providing the knowledge that the Woman had always know what to say to flummox him?), she added, "I like to know people will be on my side exactly when I need them to be, Mr. Holmes."  
  
The idea was so simple, so utterly elegant, that he forgot his resolve to ignore the Figment, and instead whirled around, Baker Street and the superimposed walls of his mind palace blurring, to face the memory of the Woman. "Did you really--"  
  
But the chair was empty.  
  
*****  
  
She came to him more frequently after he 'died'. He chalked it up to the increased amount of time he spent in his mind palace, the increased need to consult his thoughts as he cut down Moriarty's web. It took him two weeks to begin talking to her, and three more weeks for him to stop limiting their 'conversations' to the particular strand of Moriarty's web he was working to eliminate.  
  
It was more efficient to have her as his companion. She was interested in the mystery, in the puzzle. Not in the lives being snuffed out.  
  
"The receptionist fancies you," she said one morning. It was a dreary damp day in Amsterdam, and the pieces had been put in place to smoke out Moriarty's man. There was nothing more Sherlock could do until the man stumbled onto the bait they (no, Sherlock. The Woman, the _Figment_ wasn't real) had planted. Wait, then watch the web come crashing down.  
  
Waiting was, unfortunately, boring.  
  
"She fancies the disguise," Sherlock answered dismissively. "The blonde hair, the casual aloofness. She reads too many romance novels."  
  
"Perhaps," she said, rising from her seat in his chair. His mind palace was far more pleasant than the dank hotel room and its anemic light. His eyes followed her as she rose, watching the play of light against her bare skin, the ripple of muscle in her legs as she walked. He did not think on what it meant to be studying the physical attributes of the memory of a naked woman in his mind. She paused at the door of the heart of his mind palace, and looked over her shoulder at him, a smirk on her lips. "Or perhaps you're not thinking about it in the right way."  
  
How the Figment managed to irritate and frustrate him as much as the Woman herself did, Sherlock did not know. He attributed it to his superior recollection, the desire to be accurate despite his own ego (he preened at the idea). But she disappeared past the door, and he found himself following. "And what way should I be thi--" he demanded as he pushed open the door...  
  
...And found himself in a room in his mind palace he had never been in before, an entire _wing_ that was utterly unfamiliar to him, at least at first glance. A second glance revealed that he recognized the carpet. Plush, thick, white. The Woman's carpet in Belgravia. A glance at the walls showed cream wall paper, not like the Woman's wallpaper, but something he had seen in Venice a few months ago, something that fit with the Woman's aesthetic.  
  
And on and on, the details of this new part of his mind palace utterly familiar to him once he considered the details but on the whole a new room, a new place. He refused to think on the implication, on the theme connecting every thing in this place.  
  
 _Things that he had seen, things he knew, that he thought the Woman would like._  
  
And there she sat, like a queen on a throne of filigree ivory and silver, its back fanning out like some fantastic peacock. Something he'd seen on the cover of a magazine, no, a book an internet addicted woman was reading on the Tube back in London.  
  
"And what way should I be thinking about this?" he finally managed to ask. It was a strange feeling, to know there was suddenly a new wing of his mind palace, that his mind had built, brick by brick, recollection by recollection, without his conscious thought.  
  
She laughed, blood red lips curving like a sickle. "What do you _like_ , Mr. Holmes?"  
  
*****  
  
She was with him, during his capture in Serbia. He found it easier to compartmentalize the physical pain inflicted on him when he retreated to his mind palace, where she held sway. Unfortunately, he made the mistake once of retreating to what he considered her boudoir in his mind palace during a particularly lengthy interrogation, and came back to his senses painfully aroused.  
  
Awkward.  
  
It was not until Mycroft's intervention that Sherlock realized just how pervasive the Figment's presence had been, and as he began moving back towards London, he began to ignore her, to force himself to walk the streets of the city rather than the halls of his mind palace. To speak to his brother and his utterly forgettable assistant rather than the memory in his head.  
  
It was easier, when John stopped punching him.  
  
Easier to ground himself to London, to John Watson's familiar solidity, his utter humanity, than to lose himself in his mind. John's presence, even sporadically, and the familiar confines of Baker Street kept the temptation to retreat into his mind palace at bay. Though it did present another temptation, to the itch to pour his focus into find the Woman, the Woman herself in all her reality, rather than the Figment.  
  
But he resisted. Resisted the temptation to retreat into his mind palace and the cream coloured room with its white carpets, resisted the temptation to find the Woman with her racing pulse and dilated pupils. He poured his energy into his cases, into YouTube videos of serviettes and speeches.  
  
But she was there, hovering at the corner of his mind, unseen but present. Not just the Figment but the thought of Her, of the Woman herself.  
  
"Hamish."  
  
A single word triggered the thought of her despite the force of his denial, and everything about her rushed back to his mind, and there she was again, the ghost in his mind palace, in the exact center of it, standing in its heart. His memory of The Woman, the thought of her cool fingertips, blood red against his cheek, the knowing smirk on her lips that drew him mad with the very idea that there was something she knew that he did not.  
  
Even the sound of the violin piece he'd written. Not _for_ her, he refused to think he wrote it for her, even if he did. Even the sound of her sigh from his phone.  
  
It all rushed back and made it utterly impossible to concentrate.  
  
"Out of my head. I am _busy_."  
  
He refused to believe there was any regret in his voice.


End file.
